The boat explosion was completely unexpected, to both H50 and the criminals they had been sent to catch. The same criminals who had taken over a cruise ship had clearly not counted on their boss taking the ransom money and leaving them, quite literally, to flounder. Steve could see the confusion and fear in their eyes, tried to find Danny, tried to cover him from what he knew was coming, but the flames shot up before he could get there.
The boat shot up into pieces, sending Steve flying into the water. He felt his arm scrape along a jagged piece of metal, his left slide slam into a piece of siding, and his head crash into a piece of machinery before his entire body plunged into the frigid water.
He resurfaced quickly, carefully coming up close to the boat, but through as clean a patch of water as possible. Whereas it had been quiet below the surface, bodies thrashing but making no sounds, above was pure auditory chaos, screams and wails and splashes. Blinking the blood out of his eyes, he just saw more blood spread across the water, people clinging on to pieces of broken boat, trying to tread water, sirens already wailing from shore as the smoke and flames quickly drew attention.
The one thing he didn't see, the one thing he wanted to see more than anything but couldn't, was Danny.
A frantic splashing to his left caught his attention, and he spotted one of the men who had been on the boat, gun pointed at innocent passengers. Steve dove back underwater, swimming quickly, ignoring the sting in his arm, the pain in his side, and the headache that was quickly coming on.
The hardest thing to ignore was how badly he wanted to just take the chance on Kono and Chin getting there in time to corral the criminals, or frankly to just let the masked man and his compatriots drown, because they were keeping him from finding Danny, they might be keeping him from saving Danny, from getting to him in time...
Steve knew what Danny would want him to do, and it was that voice in his head, Danny's Jersey-twanged, exasperated, fond voice in his head, that made him come up under the man and tackle him onto the board he had been holding on to. His handcuffs had been lost somewhere in the water, so Steve improvised, tearing off his belt and twisting it tightly around the man's wrists, heaving his whole body onto the board.
It became automatic for him, no thinking, because he couldn't think, because if he thought he would think about Danny, and he would drown in it. One masked man, then another, then the last one, borrowed belts and scarves from others used to secure them to various boards. And by the time the last one was looped onto a board, the medic boats had arrived.
Steve felt his arms grabbed, felt himself being lifted onto a boat by EMTs. As soon as they had him on the boat, he was off again, diving down into the water, surfacing and diving again, searching frantically for Danny. As he surfaced again, he felt himself grabbed again, pulled halfway up onto the boat as he struggled against them.
"Sir, you need to let us take a look at you, please," an EMT practically begged, as three of them attempted to drag Steve up the rest of the way. "You're bleeding."
Steve continued to thrash, adrenaline warring with muscle exhaustion. "Sir, I'm going to have to sedate you," the EMT said resignedly, and Steve felt a needle slide into his shoulder. He could feel the sedation slide through his veins, but he kept fighting, not even realizing he was screaming "Danny!", screaming himself hoarse. He managed to dive in one more time, but as soon as he resurfaced, the EMTS grabbed him again, and another needle slid into his other shoulder.
He went limp, unaware of being pulled fully on the boat this time.
"What the hell did you do to him?" Danny ranted, his hands waving in the EMT's faces. He knelt by an unconscious Steve, limbs sprawled askew across the rescue boat's boards. A group of Coast Guards had gathered as well, and were assessing the site of the explosion.
